Leigh Sales is not my cup of tea as a presenter but she (and her panel) didn’t do anything wrong at all. The ABC coverage was OK in my book. When it got boring I took long breaks and then came back to see if they were any real developments. I certainly wasn’t going to watch the commercial channels and get lumbered with obnoxious idiots like Latham.

Sometimes, I think people can’t take a bit of frivolity and jokes. If we can walk and chew gum, we take something seriously overall and joke along the way. Remember, people were indeed getting tired on that panel.

Fancy graphics are so cheap and easy to produce with the right software. It’s the talking heads and overpaid managers who cost all the money.. oh and maybe the lights, cameras and transmission equipment.

Watched the coverage and was impressed with the presentations of Anthony Green! An able Crabb asked the most intelligent questions and the women on the panel outperformed the Mena! My only criticism was the over reliance, by some, on past preference allocations. The ret of it was probably worth the taxpayers’ money it cost to provide the owners of the ABC with the facts about their votes.

I thought the ABC coverage was pretty good as well. The fancy graphics may be cheap, but I was surprised how stable they were. What interested me was the interaction between Senator Wong and Treasurer Morrison. While Wong was having a good night as far as the count went, she seemed quite disinclined to take on some of Morrison’s more outrageous ideological and political ramblings. While taking down some of his more egregious statements had the risk of coming across as snarking, I was expecting a more forthright and nuanced performance. Maybe she felt she had nothing to prove, the numbers were doing the talking for her.

No response for a day so thought a change of subject. The question is, what are the qualities that made Turnbull such a successful businessman but mitigate against him transitioning to being a successful politician? My first thought is that as a businessman he had quickly learnt that if plan A was not working, even if it was the better plan, then move straight to plan B with no regret. Unfortunately, in politics, this just looks like back-flipping, particularly if done quickly and with no considered reflection on why plan A did not work, or why plan B may be better beyond political necessity. NBN, GST increase, climate change, that other social issue that is flavour of the month and the Australian Republic all spring to mind. That is, I think the true Turnbull is always on display, and those waiting for the softer small L Liberal version may have a very long wait.

One theory on that, James, is that Turnbull is effective when he gets to deal in private with people who hold executive power and can order immediate and meaningful action – as in corporate business – but flounders in situations that require consent and consensus among groups.

I think you’ll find that Turnbull was never all that successful in business either. He was simply a merchant capitalist; he was already wealthy, and gave loans to other people who had ideas. His biggest success was the OzeMail sale, and many people said at the time that Telstra was massively overpaying for it. Turnbull made $50 million from that sale, when Telstra realistically shouldn’t have offered $5 million. He’s simply a rich man who increased his wealth over a 25 year period by lending money to others and not taking many risks.

It depends on how you define “talent.” Arthur Sinodinos managed to pull a $200,000 salary for a 2-hour a year job, so that’s a sort of talent.

There are plenty of talented small businesspeople in the Liberal Party. The problem is that the Libs were created in 1944 to appeal to the middle-class, and still attract a lot of support, including membership and office-holders, from that class. John Howard is the quintessential example. The party hasn’t actually stood for the middle-class in decades, and it didn’t do a particularly good job of it when it was standing for them.